Librarians at the Gate

Job Prospects, Salary Expectations in 2011

2011-10-23T11:09:00.000-05:00

If you're thinking about getting an LIS degree, it's a good idea to know what the job market is like, and Library Journal provides an annual survey to help you weigh your options.

The latest placements and salaries survey is sobering, but not all bad news. It's tough to get library jobs, but it's not quite as tough as it is in general. There are jobs for LIS grads in unexpected places - and developing skill sets through internships and volunteer opportunities can help.

Read what recent grads have to say and check out the data in the full report.

A Couple of Links

2011-06-21T22:37:00.000-05:00

Oh my, we need to blow the dust off this blog. Here are a couple of interesting links, hot off the interwebz.

Someone decided to compile sample cover letters by librarians who were successful in their job search. The site desgner says "a cover letter is your opportunity to tell your story with much more effect than that of a resume. Think of all the other recent grads competing with you for the same position. You need to stand out, and the cover letter is an opportunity to make your case and get the interview." Also worth noting: these are for inspiration, not for copying. "Every position and every person is unique. The product of both should be a unique cover letter that explains why an individual is the best fit for a position." Still, it's good to have models.

Second, there's a report from Oxford University Press on librarians since 1880 based on census data. There was a steep growth in librarian jobs from 1950 to 1990. The analysis suggests that the dropoff since then in librarian positions, particularly from 1990 to 2000, is due to changes in technology, but my guess is that it's more complicated than that. In any case, it's an interesting report, if not particularly cheery news for anyone entering the profession since 1990! (Does it help that the rate of loss has slowed? No, I didn't think so.)

What LIS Students Should Know

2010-11-23T18:11:00.000-06:00

This is awesome advice from Jill Hurst-Wahl - things to do to be ready for the job search, including making yourself findable online, having opinions about issues in the field, and presenting yourself professionally.

Good Heavens, Is it Really May?

2010-05-24T08:09:00.003-05:00

This blog has been quiet lately, mostly because life is full of pressing deadlines and sadly, this blog is too modest and self-effacing to have deadlines. It should be more assertive with its authors. Typical Minnesotan.

But this post about applying for library positions by Meredith Farkas is a must-read if you are thinking about life post-graduate school. It offers good, sensible, and important advice to job-seekers, and unfortunately as this is a very difficult time to find employment in libraries, it's advice to take very seriously.

And so is the advice of Dorothea Salo, who begs us not to make her "go for her stompy boots" by writing a bad cover letter. If you can't write a clear, focused, well-researched letter, you're in the wrong line of work. She also shows how search committees work - and how they narrow their pool of applicants.

You can do it. Just be sure to put your best self forward.

Roots and Routes

2009-12-21T15:16:00.002-06:00

There's an interesting Wiki project on the interwebs that pulls together people's stories about how they became librarians and how their careers have evolved. This might be worth browsing - or adding to as you find your way into the profession.

Meanwhile, because it's the season, here's a bit of cheer from some clever librarians at Loyola Marymount. The whole Flickr set is a hoot. The tree is built from a massive set of volumes, the National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints.

Permission to Read Granted

2009-12-18T19:05:00.003-06:00

This sounds like a challenge I could get into. A graduate student in library school has declared December 20th "Do Nothing But Read" day. You can read all about it on her blog. Or in local media - she got into the newspaper and on the radio for her radical suggestion.

Here are the requirements:
-you must read more than one book (they can be short, and short stories count!)
-comfy clothing (jammies preferable)
-no shoes (slippers are ok)
-mugs of beverages and snacks

Optional:
-sleepy cat(s)
-blankies

I think I might just be able to sacrifice and take a stab at this one....

Why Do We Need Libraries? Go!

2009-09-19T08:31:00.001-05:00

Feral Librarian has a quartet of handy answers should you have to quickly respond to the challenge, "in the age of the Internet, why do we need libraries?" Hat tip to Jenna for the link.

Advice for Would-Be Librarians

2009-08-07T19:29:00.002-05:00

Erin, the Library Scenester, likes talking to prospective librarians about the profession - one that she's fairly recently joined herself. She says this about her job:

I see my place as helping students on their educational journey. I want to help them become better, more educated and experiences citizens who can achieve their goals. I want their experience with the library to be a positive and beneficial one so that they will become library champions, utilizing their public libraries in the future and with their children, appreciating literature and reading, using technology to interact with the global community and being knowledgeable about the viewpoints of humanity. These are some of the things I hope to achieve.

The librarians at Gustavus are happy to answer your questions - even if we might not be quite so profound. Feel free to ask us anything you want to know about the field. We have experience in many different kinds of libraries and some of us graduated fairly recently. (Some of us . . . well, cataloging those clay tablets was done differently in my day, and when papyrus came along . . . )

Bradbury on Libraries

2009-06-23T06:36:00.003-05:00

Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and many other imaginative books is a great library supporter, as profiled in The New York Times:

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

He's helping California libraries, hit hard by plummeting property tax revenues, stay open. His opinion of the Internet is just about as favorable as it was toward television in Farenheit 451. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Another Radicalizing Experience

2009-05-15T11:46:00.007-05:00

First, an introduction. I've had permission to post to this blog for quite awhile but have been a hesitant blogger - a combination of innate shyness and a tendency to take forever to craft a paragraph. (For example, I started this post at eleven this morning. Granted, I've stopped for a leisurely lunch and a couple of meetings, but still.) The breezy spring air and a severe lack of sleep (thanks to a new, amazing baby) have lowered my defenses. I've been a librarian for a couple years and, after a few trips through the public and community college library spheres, am happily employed at an academic library. My job duties and responsibilities are so diverse that I can only talk in terms of a typical month, not day, but by then it's all a blur. My main interests are information literacy and new issues in library automation (really).

This article came through one of the listservs this morning: Best Careers 2009: Librarian

Well, obviously, I thought when I saw it. I love being a librarian for many reasons, although I'll wax poetic about it during another post. What intrigues me are the number of reader comments discussing average salaries for librarians. They are, typically, low. It's a touchy subject. While I didn't go in to librarianship for the money, and while there are a number of rewards far greater than the salary, I suspect there are many reasons why our salaries are on the low end, not the least of which is the profession's history (and present) as being a female dominated profession. I'm the daughter of a nurse, after all. This is nothing new to me.

In today's economy, I'm thankful I have not only a job, but one I love. I try not to stay up nights engaging in "worst case scenario" thinking (this means going against my nature, but I'm working on it). But when the salary discussion comes up, I find myself thinking about my sister. She's a church musician in geographical location that doesn't have a huge demand for musicians with graduate degrees. She interviewed for a job at a church and they offered her a rate that was about half what she (and her professional organization) charges for her talents. In a move that made me even more proud of her than I was before, she told them she could not in good conscience take the job for less than what she would normally charge. "One of my jobs as a teacher of other musicians is to advocate for our profession - that we are taken seriously and paid a fair wage," she told me. "I can't tell one thing to my students and then take a job that pays me far less than I'm worth." Amen, sister!

I'm not faulting our profession, and those who have gone before, for not advocating enough for librarians. And I know first-hand that sometimes you need to take the low paying job. Or that the funds just aren't there, even if the powers that be want to pay you more. But my sister's experience made me wake up to the fact that I have a responsibility to the profession and to future librarians. I need to advocate for fair wages for librarians in my community and beyond, if the opportunities present themselves. And maybe I need to seek out those opportunities more. (This probably will be more effective than my previous plan of becoming Bruce Springsteen's personal librarian.)

They say that motherhood is a radicalizing experience. It's been that way for me, so far. (Look for future posts on why the heck there's no day care at my institution.) For me, librarianship is too.

Happy (End of) National Library Week

2009-04-19T13:36:00.004-05:00

Perhaps a little late to the party, but here are some pop-culture references to librarians courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.

Or on a more scholarly note, you might enjoy reading this article - or this one - though neither appears to be freely available online. Guess you'll have to get them through your library.

Movers, Shakers, Shovers, Bakers . . .

2009-03-26T17:22:00.006-05:00

The Library Society of the World (which exists in multiple Web 2.0 locations here and there - and everywhere!) has a tongue-in-cheek approach to librariana and has decided to create an alternative to Library Journal's Movers and Shakers -and you can be one, too. The beauty of the Shovers and Makers award is that you nominate yourself. This is totally consistent with the non-organization's values which include "humor and a sense of playfulness and creativity about our work and upcoming challenges" as well as "crazy's okay."

It's fun to browse through the profiles of Shovers and Makers - and see how many ways librarians enact their playfulness and creativity.

Sad News

2009-03-11T19:37:00.002-05:00

I read the latest issue of American Libraries Direct with great sadness:

Hundreds or thousands of school media specialists will be laid off in California.
A community college librarian lost his or her job and is asking for advice.
Philadelphia will be closing 11 branch libraries.
The Pennsylvania State Library is facing a budget cut of 50%.

If these kinds of cuts continue, who will provide access to information to a citizenry that needs to be more informed than ever before? Who will provide instruction to students needing assistance in navigating the sea of information available to them? Who will continue to champion access and literacy?

Call me a worry wart if you must, but this news makes my stomach hurt.

Literacy Plus

2009-02-16T07:08:00.003-06:00

The New York Times's correspondent covering the publishing world, Motoko Rich, has been gradually presenting a series on "the future of reading." In her latest installment, she considers the role of information literacy as a cause related to the plain old literacy that librarians have long espoused. It focuses on a New York school librarian and makes a good case for the need to have professionals in schools.

It's a little shallow for the Times, though - all of the articles in this series seem to be skimming the surface. I miss the days when David D. Kirkpatrick was their insider for the book world. His coverage of the "serials crisis" - the factors that have jacked up the prices of scientific journals and eaten library budgets whole - remains a well-sourced, thoughtful overview of the issue even thought it was published back in 2000.

Is it Getting Hot in Here?

2009-02-08T11:18:00.003-06:00

It is, if you're a digital archivist. Or, in the words of one of them profiled in The New York Times, an archivist.

“I don’t think there’s any day where I would say I’m the digital guy,” [Joe Nadel] said. But he concedes that he’s not really an analog, ink-on-paper guy, either, and that is increasingly the case in his field. These days, he noted, “if you want to work in a library, you have to deal in electronic resources.”

He also describes his accidental career path:

Befitting a nascent discipline like digital asset management, Mr. Nadal, 32, said he went into it almost by accident. Unsure of his career ambitions, he began work on various book-scanning and preservation projects as a student at Indiana University, then took them over when the head of preservation left. After that, he said, it “took a year or two for me to realize my career in preservation had started a year or two past.”

He reckons that many of his peers have had similar experiences. “Among librarians, I think that happenstance may be a typical career path,” he said.

But the best part is Nadel's rousing defense of working for the public good.

As much as it might help his bank balance, Mr. Nadal cannot envision leaving U.C.L.A. for a corporate job. He finds the challenge of taming a vast collection of information for a major academic institution too appealing.

“We belong to the people of California and hold our collections in trust for them and for future generations of students, scholars and members of the public,” he said. “Public-sector institutions just strike me as far, far cooler. They have better collections, obviously, and they are innovative, connected and challenging in ways that seem more substantial to me.”

What a Bargain

2009-01-17T09:17:00.003-06:00

There's a post on the Freakonomics blog (via New York Times, which I found as a link via Tim Spalding's Facbook Page - and if that doesn't challenge the Information Literacy Standards insistence that research starts with identifying an information need, I don't know what does ... but I digress, as I almost always do when finding information) about the soaring use of libraries in tough economic times. Read the comments. It will do your heart good to hear how much people value their libraries and the whole idea of public libraries as a communal resource. There are notes on the proposed closure of Philadelphia library branches (a huge controversy in the city) and some about closures of entire library systems in Oregon due to lack of funding and a reluctance to increase taxes that lasted nearly two years (!!!!), but there are also proud descriptions of libraries that provide their communities enormous value.

There is also a comment that amused and dismayed me. (It's comment #52 on page 3.) At a newly-opened library in Connecticut there are all kinds of innovations, including this one:

The Dewey Decimal system is gone. Books are arranged by subject.

That qualifies as the most inadvertantly damning critique of library organizations I've ever encountered.

"among our society's most empowering people"

2009-01-09T07:26:00.003-06:00

US News once again points to librarianship as one of the best careers.

Librarianship is an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons solve their problems and, in the process, learning new things. Librarians may also go on shopping sprees, deciding which books and online resources to buy. They may even get to put on performances, like children's puppet shows, and run other programs, like book discussion groups for elders. On top of it all, librarians' work environment is usually pleasant and the work hours reasonable, although you may have to work nights and/or weekends

The job market for special librarians (see below) is good but is sluggish for public and school librarians. Nevertheless, persistent sleuthing—that key attribute of librarians—should enable good candidates to prevail.
That effort to land a job will be well worth it if you're well suited to the profession: love the idea of helping people dig up information, are committed to being objective—helping people gain multiple perspectives on issues—and will remain inspired by the awareness that librarians are among our society's most empowering people.

In the interest of objectivity, this week a post about the difficult job market in academic libraries at ACRLog has generated lots of comments from the trenches. The effort to land a job is not to be taken lightly.

Obsolete? Not Yet.

2008-11-23T12:45:00.003-06:00

An Australian columnist wonders whether book rental schemes like Book Swim will make libraries as obsolete as video rental stores - and concludes that they won't. Not only do the rental schemes cost money (and libraries, unlike video rental stores, offer their collections for free) but they don't have a wide enough variety of offerings, focusing instead on current bestsellers. But she also points out something less tangible but very important about libraries.

Libraries still serve as one of the rare public meeting spaces not devoted to commerce. They help kids with research and adults with job hunts and starting businesses and their own formal and informal educations. Libraries buy books based on both popularity and serving their public. They tend to fight the good fight to make sure controversial material is available. You know, good quality-of-life, bastion of democracy stuff.

She also recommends some simple ways that libraries could be even better.

I think with the right savvy, libraries are up to the task of competing with even an improved book rental service. Already, through inter-library loans you can get almost anything, and with my countywide system's online reservation system, it's almost as easy as Netflix to request something. A little slow to get it, but that should be fixable. Make renewing easier, with a warning system when something's coming due, and you're most of the way there for me.

And she closes with a final benefit: when you've grown weary of reading that same picture book fifty-five times to your child, you can claim that it's due at the library.

Don't Mess With Us

2008-11-10T08:01:00.004-06:00

Mother Jones has a profile of "America's Most Dangerous Librarians" - the principled librarians in Connecticut who challenged the constitutionality of a National Security Letter authorized by the PATRIOT Act and served on a library consortium.

It's good reading, even if the title is a play on popular stereotypes. Dangerous? Librarians? How could that be?

But here's a case where members of our profession stood up to authority for principled reasons, and that made them powerful. And a threat to a law that was enacted in haste to strengthen the FBI's surveillance powers even as it weakened the Constitution.

As Michael Moore once said, "don't mess with librarians."

Just in Time for Banned Books Week . . .

2008-09-29T19:08:00.001-05:00

London news sources are reporting that the home of a Dutch publisher who will be releasing a novel about Aisha, Mohammed's wife, was the target of a firebombing. Police arrested three men in the attack.

The novel, Jewel of Medina, by American author Sherry Jones was nearing publication in the US with Random House when the reaction of an early reader led the publisher to cancel its publication. Some criticized Random House for the decision.

Banned Books Week "emphasizes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them." David Ulin, Books Editor for the L.A. Times, has an interesting essay on this "thorny issue."

What happens when our ideals require us to defend a piece of writing that is reprehensible, that stands against everything we stand for?

It's easy to condemn those who would remove "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from a library, but what about "The Turner Diaries" or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"? Or for that matter, "Tintin in the Congo," which Little, Brown dropped from its "Tintin" reissue series last fall after controversy arose about the book's racist overtones?

These are not just academic questions; they are the heart of the matter, regardless of where you stand on the ideological divide. How do we defend one book without defending all? Such a notion can't help but make us uneasy, but then, that's one of the most essential things books can do. . . . Yet we forget the world is complicated, that it is full of opposing viewpoints and beliefs that, in many cases, we can't accommodate, at our own peril. What to do, then? Sweep them under the rug? Or face them and consider what we're up against?

This is the conversation we ought to be having during Banned Books Week, a conversation that encompasses not just a love of reading and a disdain for those who would restrict it but also the implications of the free flow of ideas. Even the most horrific things have something to teach us, something about human darkness, our capacity to go wrong. . . . if books don't make us uncomfortable, they're not doing their job.

To call that a mixed blessing is an understatement in a world where a work like "Mein Kampf" can continue to exert its awful pull. And yet to suggest otherwise is to declare that writing is unessential, which is even worse.

both a borrower and a lender be

2008-07-26T07:34:00.002-05:00

This map surprised me. It uses data and alters maps to reflect the numbers by changing the size of countries; here, it shows how many books were borrowed from public libraries per capita around the world in 1999. US circulation rates are on the rise, but still - what a surprise that Russians borrow more than Americans. Well, maybe not ... though I wonder what state their libraries are in these days.

The saddest thing is this last bit of commentary: " Where many people cannot afford books, it appears they often cannot borrow them either."

privacy and security

2008-07-24T16:43:00.003-05:00

Here's another stumper for the files. A librarian, surrounded by large police officers searching for a missing girl, asked for a warrant when they tried to seize a computer. And she stuck to her guns.

A missing girl is serious, and it's not hard to see that time is of the essence. But like most states, Vermont has a law protecting library records. I am not sure if they have a law enabling phone warrants in an emergency, but many states do - basically, you get a judge to sign off fast and do the paperwork later.

To my mind, not getting a warrant is risky if you're expecting to prosecute someone successfully. If the evidence were thrown out, so would any evidence arising from the search as "fruit of the poisonous tree." You have to balance speed with the very real need to not just respect the Constitution, but to build a case that can lead to conviction.

I think librarians need to do more than talk about privacy and slippery slopes to explain why a librarian would refuse to help police in a case like this. It's not self-evident to everyone that privacy is important at all when a child's safety is at risk - and we run the risk of sounding like rule-bound twits.

It's something to think about. How would you handle a situation like this? And how would you explain your decision in a way that even skeptics could understand?

The Future of Libraries ...

2008-07-01T09:45:00.003-05:00

... is sounding interesting. This is quite a fascinating time to be in the profession.

I really like the idea of the library as kitchen rather than grocery store. In the early 20th century, John Cotton Dana envisioned the library as an industrial place. People were supposed to get in and out, fast, with maximum efficiency. A counter-idea to the workshop/factory library was the welcoming living room, where female librarians nourished proper habits. Early works on library design show some fascinating underlying assumptions.

I like the idea of it being a welcoming kitchen where you can do some cooking, have a chat around the kitchen table, and where everyone's comfortable. But most of all, where you get to cook your own, not be served a meal that someone else decided was nourishing nor to be efficiently served by a machine.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

2008-06-11T13:07:00.002-05:00

File this under crowdsourcing (or the "wisdom of crowds"), virtual reference, or "digital sweatshop"...

A fascinating article explicates a new Amazon.com "crowdsourcing" tool called Amazon Mechanical Turk. The company ChaCha, which provides a type of virtual reference service, employs Turk workers. The author of the article tried out ChaCha, and observed that, crowds are "no more intelligent than their smartest members."

Anyway, read the article. I am not sure how to explain the concept pithily...

Collecting of self-published books

2008-06-11T10:41:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting snippet from the April issue of College & Research Libraries News:

Print-on-demand publishing continues to rise in popularity. Lulu.com has published more than 320,000 titles, created by people in more than 80 countries, with more than 5,000 new titles added each week. Amazon.com offers a similar service via its CreateSpace, which also produces film and audio on DVDs and CDs. Blurb.com makes available 11,000 self-published titles. The interfaces on these Web sites now make it easier than ever to publish and make changes to books without cost to the author. Candice Choi, Associated Press Writer, “Got a manuscript? Publishing now a snap,” The Boston Globe, January 1, 2008.

So, the question is, how do libraries collect these self-published books? A lot of librarians depend on published reviews or approval plans for collection development, neither which really cover this market. I suppose one way would be to look at these sites' best seller lists (1, 2) as a starting point.

Librarians have an obligation to consider these sources if they hope to develop diverse collections.

"Library budgets, open access, and the future of scholarly communication"

2008-06-11T10:14:00.002-05:00

For those interested in the future of academic librarianship, you may find this an intriguing article. David Lewis argues that the increasing costs of scholarly journals are not sustainable and that the changing landscape of scholarly communication mean that libraries cannot continue offering the same old services.

He offers three ways libraries can ensure a place in this changing landscape and five-point budget strategy for the future. Read the article and let me know what you think, especially of his budget strategy.

Depressing Article of the Week

2008-06-11T09:30:00.002-05:00

Read this article at Inside Higher Ed. While this may seem like a digression from the central theme of the blog, the implications for libraries and librarians are enormous.

This article paints a bleak picture for the future of the humanities. The increasing privatization of education, the adoption of corporate values by administrators, the high cost of education, and students choosing schools and majors in hopes of being offered a high-paying job are all contributing to its demise.

I wonder why we are giving up on education for education's sake: to free ourselves from ignorance and to free ourselves for exploring the world and serving others. I, like everyone else, like to get paid for my work at the end of the day, but how can we convince students and parents there is more to life than this? How can we share our passion for discovery, knowledge, and community?

I may delete or edit this post in the future, but these issues have been weighing heavily on my mind for some time now.

Kindle making waves

2008-06-02T09:08:00.003-05:00

Amazon's e-book reader, the Kindle, has been making waves at BookExpo America.

librarian with a thousand faces (or half a dozen, anyway)

2008-05-20T08:19:00.003-05:00

Old maid? Policeman? Inept or heroic? In this study, media representations are sorted into categories and analyzed. The sad reality, according to the authors, is that most people don't know what librarians do and that means they don't take full advantage of our talents.

finding a balance

2008-05-17T15:53:00.002-05:00

T. Scott has a very good post on work/life balance. One of the things that can be challenging in an academic library (and no doubt in other types of libraries, too) is that you can never sit back and say "There, I'm done." You can finish a project, sometimes - though most of mine seem to be ongoing commitments that need constant care and feeding. But there's always more to do, and in this wired world there is no real demarcation between "work" and "the rest of my life." He says -

I don't have a "life outside of work." I have a life. It's comprised of many things -- many responsibilities, many joys, a handful of deep sorrows, a continual sense of wonderment as the days unfold. I never stop being the library director, but I never stop being the musician, friend, grandfather, lover, writer, or endlessly curious little boy, either.

When a "job" is what you go to for eight hours a day, five days a week, within rigid time & place boundaries, I suppose it makes psychological sense to think of "work" and "life" as two separate things. But in the networked world in which we now live, for many people that time & space separation simply doesn't exist. It certainly doesn't for me. When I go to Peebles, whether I'm playing guitar or talking about health information, I'll just be living my life as best I can.

That sounds very healthy to me.

. . . because sometimes . . .

2008-05-07T09:35:00.003-05:00

. . . you just have to be silly.

I found this via Jessamyn's blog, where I particularly liked Tim K's comment, "What, no guys to dress up? As a male librarian I resent not being objectified!"

What Will Librarians Do in 2020?

2008-04-23T14:50:00.003-05:00

Planning ahead? Some librarians provide interesting food for thought about what libraries - and librarians - may be doing down the road, at least in academic libraries. Some things will likely remain the same, some things will change - in ways we can't entirely predict.

Balancing security with access

2008-04-15T10:44:00.003-05:00

Here's some food for thought from Slashdot. How will the government's proposed network security plans affect access to government information?

Bad travel guides

2008-04-13T00:00:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting story about some of the Lonely Planet travel guides. Apparently, one of their writers plagiarized some of his material and did not visit some of the places he wrote about. The libraries I have worked in purchase large numbers of travel guides, including those published by Lonely Planet. I wonder if we'll see the guides he wrote being pulled from library shelves?

Good reading

2008-04-11T16:41:00.004-05:00

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review is out, and there a few good articles that would interest academic librarians:

Conference Connections: Rewiring the Circuit. This article discusses "remaking" conferences with Internet technologies and social networking tools. As the technology becomes more reliable and easier to use, conferences can consider moving away from physical gatherings to online events, reducing costs and enabling wider participation. The extraordinary costs (financial, time, environmental, and more) of attending the semiannual conferences of ALA have been a recent issue of conversation in the library blogosphere.
E-Books in Higher Education: Nearing the End of the Era of Hype? An update on the status of e-books in higher education. I don't know any librarians who really like the kinds of e-books we have available to us now. (NetLibrary, *cough*.) Incompatible devices, digital rights management, poor accessibility and usability, strange licensing agreements, and lack of choice (both titles we want and the ability to customize large packages) are just some of the issues. However, some shrewd people are making use of the e-books we have available to us, such as graduate students using the books accessible through Google Books. (A historian has another perspective.)
Facebook 2.0. The author, Tracy Mitrano, explains three implications of this popular social networking tool. The first is "user education, especially for adolescents and their parents." She provides an anecdote demonstrating the need for this education. In her particular example, it appears that some young adults may not be completely aware of the importance of privacy, which Siva Vaidhyanathan defines as "reputation management." The second implication (and last I will list here) is the possibility of "connecting higher education's missions to the popular site." She highlights perhaps the central concern with such linking (which Siva explicated in the above post): "Privacy and free speech concerns will always be in tension with commercial interests that seek information about users and their preferences."

Is Librarianship a Profession?

2008-04-04T10:49:00.004-05:00

Well, Dorothea Salo has some pungent thoughts on that topic - suggesting that, if it is, it's not about what we do, it's about how we set up our boundaries and who we keep out. Provocative reading. So is Rachel Singer Gordon in "Whole Lot of Quacking Going on."

The nub of the issue is the divide between people who work in libraries who don't have the graduate degree and those who do - and how power relationships, respect, and reward for the work a person actually does play into it.

Personally, I work at a library where the day-to-day management of things is done by non-degreed folks who regard their work as a serious career. Librarians teach in classes and at the reference desk, develop the collection to match the curriculum, work on making it as accessible as possible through well-designed portals, and do research. A lot of decisions are made by everyone in the library, a few are made by those without graduate degrees in librarianship, a few are made by the library faculty, and a lot are made by mixed groups tackling a problem. It's not a matter of who's important or who deserves respect, but where it makes the most sense for decisions to be made.

Somehow, the why I teach meme says more about why I'm a librarian than "are we a profession?" debates.

US News and World Report's Best Graduate Schools

2008-03-28T14:24:00.004-05:00

The 2009 rankings have been released, but the library and information studies schools have not been updated. The last time US News ranked LIS programs was in 2006.

What we librarians have been doing for years...

2008-03-28T10:37:00.002-05:00

A short article at Wired. [Via Library Link of the Day.]

Books meet Web 2.0

2008-03-20T17:19:00.004-05:00

Barbara has discussed LibraryThing here, among other places. Today NPR explores social-networking sites for readers, like LibraryThing and similar sites.

(Alec, hope you don't mind but I decided to upload a photo of Sonya, who works with the LibraryThing for Libraries program, who I met at the Public Library Association conference - with the famous rhino. Actually, there were two rhinos, so they're moving up in the world. --Barbara)

Upgrading to Geek 2008

2008-03-17T19:02:00.003-05:00

There is a great article in the January issue of Computers in Libraries titled Upgrading to Geek 2008. The author describes how some formal education in computer science really helped him in his library work. For example, he explains how coursework in discrete math, finite automata, and database design, theory, and implementation made him better at what he does. He contends that the best way to learn this material "is to take some classes," such as at the college or university you might work for or at the local community college. If you can't take some classes on the side, he strongly recommends picking up a book and learning the Python or Ruby programming languages.

As a librarian and as someone who completed a minor in computer science, I can't agree more with his advice. Basic coursework in computer science helped me develop better abstract thinking and gave me some knowledge of different computer programming languages, as well as the confidence to play around with code with which I am not immediately familiar. As a result, I have been able to make tech contribution in every library at which I have worked.

So, if you are still in college and thinking of pursuing a library career, consider completing a minor in computer science. It makes a wonderful complement.

The end of the print encyclopedia?

2008-03-17T16:18:00.003-05:00

The online encyclopedia is a great example of an e-book done well. Read more about the possible end of the print encyclopedia at the NY Times.

Shake, Shake, Shake!

2008-03-16T08:41:00.002-05:00

If you want to get a peek at how much fun librarianship can be - and how librarians can be innovative, check out Library Journal's current crop of "movers and shakers."

One of my favorites on the list is not a librarian by training, but Tim Spalding is one of those bibliophile hackers who is doing very cool stuff with cataloging. And now some of it can be integrated into library catalogs, too.

Why I am a Librarian - more responses

2008-03-01T10:35:00.002-06:00

I loved the Other Librarian's response to the "why I am a librarian" meme - starting from infancy and proceeding through the career. Six months into the first professional job, she finds these are what convinces her it was the right choice:

teen patrons saying hello out of a library context
helped someone through a serious health information inquiry
got a procrastinating student through a project due next weekend
found a weird object to classify and got it fixed nice and easy-like
saw a navigation issue with the website and found a logical way to fix it

Another great contribution to the meme is from Iris, the Pegasus Librarian. (Her blog is an excellent one to read if you're interested in academic librarianship.)

Slightly more prosaic is the twitter-style response that Julian provides - in only 140 characters.

The Vanishing Librarians

2008-02-20T09:49:00.002-06:00

When the business models and practices invades every aspect of our lives, from our public services to our colleges and universities, this is what happens to a profession.

Here's one snippet:

The success of the enterprise is measured in the number of products collected by patrons, now called “customers.” It is no longer measured in the usefulness or impact of the service on the quality of life in the community served.

I had the experience of working briefly in a public library where my manager called all library patrons "customers" and I spent a lot of my time, a professional librarian, showing people how to use the self-checkout station. I didn't stay there long.

Libraries have distinct missions separate from those of bookstores and other businesses. Such distinctions can be found in the ALA Library Bill of Rights and the Code of Ethics. Examples:

"Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation."
"Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."
"Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment."
"Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas."
"A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views."
"We [librarians] provide... equitable access..."
"We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom..."
"We protect each library user's right to privacy..."

Bookstores and other businesses are not obligated to:

provide resources for enlightenment,
serve all people in its community,
provide materials providing all points of view,
challenge censorship,
resist abridgment of free expression,
provide equitable access to information,
uphold principles of intellectual freedom, or
protect their customers' right to privacy.

As long as businesses are beholden to shareholders, their primary mission is making money. Yes, business models and practices can bring tremendous cost savings and efficiency to enterprises, but the values listed above are neither cheap nor efficient to provide. That is why libraries exist as public entities. The community makes available to itself a place where individuals can access the world of information and find a broad range of resources free from censorship with multiple points of view and can read and use those materials privately.

A big part of professional library education is becoming acculturated to and conversant in these values. John Berry's article behooves us to fight for these values and against the business creep into our libraries, whether they be public or academic.

Privacy

2008-02-19T17:10:00.003-06:00

Privacy has been a core value in librarianship for some time because, as Barbara has recently explained, "it’s a necessary condition for the freedom to read whatever you want without risk of penalty." It's a topic that is being reconsidered in the profession, because strict privacy "makes it harder to offer the kind of personalization, such as recommendations based on previous book choices, that the public increasingly expects from online systems. After all, it’s what they get from Amazon."

So it's timely that Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses the state of privacy in our society in a recent review article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Privacy is important, but why? He explains:

When we complain about infringements of privacy, what we really demand is some measure of control over our reputation in the world. Who should have the power to collect, cross-reference, publicize, or share information about us, regardless of what that information might be? ... Through a combination of weak policies, vapid public discussions, and some remarkable technologies like camera phones and the Internet, we have less and less control over our reputations every day. ... Rehabilitation demands substantial autonomy and control over one's record — or at least forgiveness. As long as we are held highly accountable for youthful indiscretions that are easily Googled by potential employers or U.S. customs agents, we limit social, intellectual, and actual mobility. And we deny everyone second chances.

Because privacy "is not a clear and common set of traits," Siva defines four types of privacy domains:

Person-to-peer
Person-to-firm ("the flow of information to companies from and about consumers")
Person-to-state ("Because the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence, imprisonment, and deportation, the cost of being falsely caught in a dragnet is worth considering no matter how unlikely it seems to be.")
Person-to-public ("the ways we regulate what those around us know or assume about us")

Moving from defining privacy to examining its invasions, Siva contends that we work in a "Nonopticon," which is the "state of being watched without knowing it, or at least the extent of it." Indeed, "[t]he most pervasive surveillance does not reveal itself or remains completely clandestine... We don't know all the ways we are being recorded or profiled. We are not supposed to understand that we are the product of marketers as much as we are the market. And we are not supposed to consider the extent to which the state tracks our behavior and considers us all suspects in crimes yet to be imagined, let alone committed."

Companies, Siva writes, "want us to relax and be ourselves. ... They are devoted to tracking our eccentricities because they understand that the ways we set ourselves apart from the mass are the things about which we are most passionate. Our passions, predilections, fancies, and fetishes are what we are likely to spend our surplus cash on." And "[e]ven the state wants us to be ourselves": "It wants subversive and potentially dangerous people to reveal themselves through their habits and social connections, not slink away in the dark to avoid obvious surveillance."

Siva believes nothing will really change from small changes, "like better privacy policies." Instead:

We must demand to know the terms of surveillance by our state and its partners in the private sector. We must be allowed to be agents in the construction of our reputations. We must insist on fairness, openness, and accountability in those institutions that commit such widespread surveillance. Otherwise we will cease being citizens. We will be subjects...

Thinking about academic librarianship?

2008-02-18T16:05:00.003-06:00

If you are pondering a possible career in academic librarianship or have graduated from library school and are preparing for interviews, read up on issues facing our profession in two important reports:

The Association of College and Research Libraries' Environmental Scan 2007. [PDF]

The EDUCAUSE 2008 Horizon Report.

Librarians ahead of the curve...

2008-02-18T15:40:00.002-06:00

For our Minnesotan readers, you might enjoy this post over at the MINITEX Reference blog. Turns out Minnesota librarians are already providing their residents with the Governor's proposed "world-class, digitally stored, always available, anywhere, anytime, jaw-dropping, eye-popping teaching toolbox accessible to all our teachers and students."

Stand out as a librarian

2008-02-13T17:22:00.001-06:00

I found this post, Nine Simple Ways to Stand Out in Your Career, at the blog The Simple Dollar, to really ring true to me. I have practiced these suggestions to different degrees and have found all have advanced my career in various ways during my first three years as a professional librarian. But these are good to keep in mind whatever year we're at in the career.

Don't take our word for it...

2008-02-05T11:41:00.001-06:00

U.S. News and World Report names librarianship one of the top careers in 2008!

Their narrative description is a bit simplistic, but I do agree that it is an underrated career.

Why I am a Librarian

2008-02-02T10:53:00.001-06:00

Free Exchange on Campus started a meme on "why I teach." I weighed in on "why I am a librarian" and tagged some others. I hope we'll collect a few more, since they offer some real insight into both the daily pleasures and the philosophical reasons for being in this profession.

Free Exchange (Barbara Fister)

Info-fetishist (Anne-Marie Dietering)

Karen Munro, E-Learning Librarian

All of the "Why" posts can be found here if you scroll down a bit.

Librarians and classroom faculty: Defining roles in information literacy

2008-02-01T09:53:00.000-06:00

For you academic librarians and wannabes on the list.

I appreciated the article "A Discipline-Based Approach to Information Literacy," by Ann Grafstein, published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship (July 2002, pgs. 197-204). I think there is a lot of confusion, especially among classroom faculty and young librarians, about the roles of each in teaching information literacy.

Grafstein first highlights a key assumption in the information literacy literature:

"The [information literacy] literature conveys a widely held belief that because the content of disciplines is constantly changing, subject content cannot be taught effectively; therefore, teaching should focus on process." (200)

But Grafstein goes on to argue that we must distinguish between different types of content: information and knowledge. This leads her to argue:

"Bearing in mind the distinctions between knowledge and information, it can be truly stated that information--not knowledge--is constantly changing. ... The paradigms and knowledge-base of a discipline are a conservative force, and are not subject to rapid, sudden changes." (200) (emphasis mine)

(This, of course, is a reference to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.)

We librarians, then, must respect that subject-based knowledge is just as important as "information retrieval" in helping to develop an information literate person, i.e. one who has the skills of "analytical reasoning, critical thinking, and learning to learn" (200). Indeed, there is "a substantial body of research that supports the view that prior related knowledge is an essential element in the acquisition of new knowledge" (200).

All this is Grafstein's long way of coming to define what she sees as the appropriate roles for librarians and classroom faculty in teaching the skills needed for information literacy. Librarians should teach the following:

Searching skills
Generic critical thinking skills, such as the evaluation of information using the criteria of timeliness, authority, bias, verifiability, and logical consistency. (This list looks awfully familiar to those who teach evaluation of Web information.)

Classroom faculty, one the other hand, should focus on the following "evaluative skills... within the context of [their respective] discipline[s]" (202):

Evaluating the content of arguments
Assessing the validity of evidence
Proposing original solutions

I think if we librarians can keep these distinctions in mind, we might be able to better reach out to those classroom faculty who think we librarians want to come into their classrooms and take over teaching the content of their courses. We just have to remind them what we do well and praise them for their own subject expertise. I have faculty time and again tell me that they are amazed by the search strategies they learn from me when they bring their classes into the library. This makes sense; we librarians have search skills. I, on the other hand, am always amazed by what I learn from faculty when I sit in in their classes. So, let's work hand in hand, each with our own expertise complementing the other's, and teach our students to work critically with information.

Reading: Diminishing? Or was it never here anyway? [edited]

2008-02-01T09:40:00.001-06:00

I have become really interested lately in the national discussion about reading. The National Endowment for the Arts believes the quantity Americans are reading is diminishing at an alarming rate, with devastating consequences for our democracy and culture. If you want to read more about this debate, here are some relevant citations. I am interesting in finding more, so please share then, if you have any.

Bayard, Pierre. How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read. Bloomsbury, 2007.
Bell, Stephen. Kindle Is A Failed Concept Says Jobs. ACRLog. January 16, 2008.
Crain, Caleb. Twilight of the Books. The New Yorker. (December 24, 2007).
Le Guin, Ursula K. Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading. Harper’s Magazine. (February 2008).
National Endowment for the Arts. To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence. 2007.
Ross, Catherine Sheldrick, et al. Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community. Libraries Unlimited, 2005.

Google and librarians [edited]

2008-02-01T09:31:00.001-06:00

Some big name bloggers are wondering if Google "cares" about libraries and librarians. See here and here. My take? They care enough at least to work with libraries to access to their books for the Google Books project. But even this project is suspect. They have their mission (profit) and we have ours (access). While we can appreciate the power of Google's capital to do the big projects we can't do, we can't lose sight of the divergent missions.

By the way, here are some readings if you want to learn more about the Google Books project or ebooks in general:

Crane, Gregory. What Do You Do with a Million Books? D-Lib Magazine 12 (3) (March 2006).
Lynch, Clifford. The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World. First Monday 6 (6) (June 2001).
Kelly, Kevin. Scan This Book! The New York Times. (May 14, 2006).
Levy, Steven. The Future of Reading. Newsweek (November 26, 2007).
Schaffhauser, Dian. Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. Campus Technology. (January 1, 2008).
Toobin, Jeffrey. Google’s Moon Shot: The quest for the universal library. The New Yorker. (February 5, 2007).

Careerism or Career?

2008-01-26T18:17:00.000-06:00

The Guardienne of the Tomes has an interesting post about her take on librarianship as a career - focusing especially on her radical lack of interest in advancing up the ladder and becoming a library director.

Director/deanship was never in my plan. I wanted to find an academic library where I could make an impact on the students and teach them some lifelong skills they'll actually use once most of that philosophy major is long forgotten, where every day would bring something different and where I could - within reason - make my own decisions about what I thought was important for a librarian to be involved in, and, like Nike says, "Just do it." I have that in my current position....

I suppose my question for all those who are pouring out the career advice would be, is there anything wrong with being happy where you are? Is that complacency, or just sanity?

I think "sanity" covers it nicely. And there's plenty of evidence of both her sanity and her commitment to the field in her post on teaching.

This is Fun

2007-12-22T08:27:00.000-06:00

An LIS grad student created a site where you can explore "your inner librarian." It's wonderful.

And through it, I found a test that can tell you whether you really should fill out that library school application - or find the "I hate libraries" meeting just down the hall - from the always entertaining Librarian Avengers.

touching the past

2007-12-02T13:08:00.001-06:00

There's an amazing digital collection of letters from Japanese-American children detained in an internment camp during World War II to Miss Breed, a children's librarian in San Diego. It's an amazing and touching story, and the letters convey a lot about an ugly time in US history.

Miss Breed was the children's librarian at San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. When her young Japanese American patrons were forced into concentration camps with their families in 1942, Breed became their reliable correspondent, sending them books, assisting with requests for supplies, and through her actions, serving as a reminder of the possibility for decency and justice in a troubled world.

Found via the always-surprising Metafilter.

Generational Pull

2007-10-16T10:05:00.000-05:00

Scott Carlson of The Chronicle of Higher Education speaks to some of the younger crowd to ask where the profession is going - though, unfortunately, the Chron is still stuck in the paywall era. If you don't have your own subscription, your library probably does. Here's the opening...

Most people are familiar with the stereotype of librarians. They are twenty- or thirtysomethings, with tattoos, cat's-eye glasses, and vintage clothes, schmoozing with famous authors, and playing DJ at parties in Brooklyn.

Wait, that's just the stereotype in The New York Times. Last summer the newspaper declared young librarians hip — and, in the minds of some librarians, actually reinforced the other stereotype: that older members of their profession are reclusive bookworms and cranky old ladies.

Whether young librarians are hip or dowdy doesn't matter. What matters is what they think about the future of the library, particularly at academic institutions.

Libraries are facing a series of immense challenges: the explosion of information, a rapidly changing technological environment, shrinking budgets, pitched battles over copyright, a new world of information literacy, and continuing deficiencies in old-fashioned literacy.

On top of it all, academic libraries face a crisis of graying leadership. Young librarians, hip or not, will eventually be the people dealing with these issues.

"Young Librarians, Talkin' 'Bout Their Generation," October 19, 2007 issue.

You can watch an interview with one of the interviewed librarians, Jessamyn West, for free! what a concept.

Almost as Good as a Librarian

2007-10-12T19:36:00.000-05:00

A technology columnist for the Chicago Tribune casts a vote for Yahoo's search over Google. Why? Because it's the next best thing to having the skills of a librarian.

The Yahoo effort (search.yahoo.com) . . . is so impressive I'm going to make it my default searcher. Best is "Search Assist," an expandable box right below where you type your query that offers a bevy of clickable terms to help you refine it. A good reference librarian will write a specific, targeted search. Yahoo's search assist gets you close to librarian status, without the bother of getting an MLS degree.

Not that I want to suggest that an MLS is a bother, mind you . . .

Via beSpacific.

Future Librarians Group

2007-09-12T18:19:00.000-05:00

I just found out, thanks to this article, that there's a fairly active Facebook group for future librarians. Looks as if there's some good stuff here!

The September Project

2007-09-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

I recently interviewed David Silver for ACRLog. He's one of the co-directors of The September Project, a grassroots effort to make libraries a site for civic engagement and discussion of issues. Our library has been involved for a couple of years. It's a nice opportunity to do some programming and build partnerships with people across campus. Quite a few of the projects are organized with other community or campus entities. And what better place to do it than a library?

Over 900 libraries are participting - in 30 countries! Very cool indeed.

In the News

2007-08-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

The Boston Globe often does a good job of covering library issues, and they've done it again with a cheering story about how busy local libraries are and how the Internet has made it easier for people to use libraries (increasing use of media and interlibrary loan in particular). A snippet:

"Everyone thought we were going to go the way of the dinosaur," said Woburn Library director Kathleen O'Doherty, whose library hums with technology-driven activity: Laptop users picking up WiFi near the limestone fireplace, patrons at the front desk collecting materials they reserved online, tourists poring over genealogical materials they learned about on the Web. Technology, O'Doherty said, has made libraries "much more vibrant and alive."
Statewide, total circulation rose 25 percent from fiscal 1996 through 2006, and interlibrary loans grew nearly 400 percent, according to the state Board of Library Commissioners. Although book circulation dipped slightly across the state, it grew considerably at many area libraries. Meanwhile, nearly every library in the region has seen substantial audiovisual growth, and interlibrary lending everywhere has soared.

The author points out this growth comes at a cost, but overall it's a tribute to how well libraries work and how enthusiastically their public is responding.

NYPL Serves Espresso

2007-07-31T16:57:00.001-05:00

BoingBoing has an astonishing story today - the New York Public Library has just installed the first Espresso book machine and will offer free printed copies of any of over 200,000 public domain book in the Open Content Alliance. Wow!

There are also a few in-copyright books available - Jason Epstein's Book Business (which predicted this gadgetry) and Chris Anderson's The Long Tail (which is wagging this puppy). If you want to check it out, go to the Science, Industry and Business library on Madison Avenue, not the one with the lions. According to the press release, this project is partially funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and is a collaboration between the On Demand Books, the Alliance, and NYPL. Even better, they're doing this elsewhere. In the fall, it will be available at the New Orleans Public Library. Amazing.

But I can't help wondering . . . what if someone came in and asked for one of each?

It's Official: We're Cool

2007-07-07T15:38:00.001-05:00

The New York Times says it's so - in the Fashion & Style section, no less. I always get whiplash from these kinds of articles from the abrupt switches from patronizing stereotypes to "hey, they're kind of cool, isn't that bizarre?" For example:

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?
Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”
When the cult film “Party Girl” appeared in 1995, with Parker Posey as a night life impresario who finds happiness in the stacks, the idea that a librarian could be cool was a joke.
Now, there is a public librarian who writes dispatches for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a favored magazine of the young literati. “Unshelved,” a comic about librarians — yes, there is a comic about librarians — features a hipster librarian character. And, in real life, there are an increasing number of librarians who are notable not just for their pink-streaked hair but also for their passion for pop culture, activism and technology.

Then again, it is the Fashion & Style section.

Google Book Search Adds Libraries

2007-06-02T18:45:00.001-05:00

I just realized that Google Book Search now incorporates Worldcat records. Making Worldcat free was a great idea; putting a link next to every book in Google Book Search that says "find in a library" - even better. And books that weren't in Book Search before now are, albeit perhaps only as an OCLC record.

Sign of the Times

2007-05-11T13:01:00.000-05:00

This is very sad. I'm hoping the ballot that would reopen the libraries for three years will pass in a few days.

It's too bad this closure, the largest in US history, hasn't gained the attention that Salinas did. I don't think I could live for any length of time in a community without a library.

This Will Make You Feel Good

2007-04-26T19:51:00.000-05:00

A friend just sent me copies of a few pages out of Annie Lamott's book Grace (Eventually). She said one page in particular was "for me." But it's for everyone who thinks about being a librarian.

She described being involved in a protest on behalf of the Salinas Public Library, threatened with closure for lack of funds. Supporters held an emergency "read-in."

We were there to celebrate some of the rare intelligence capabilities that our country can actually be proud of - those of librarians. I see them as healers and magicians. Librarians can tease out of inarticulate individuals enough information about what they are after to lead them on the path of connection. They are trail guides through the forest of shelves and aisles - you turn a person loose who has limited skills and he'll be walloped by the branches. But librarians match up readers with the right books: "Hey is this one too complicated? Then why don't you give this one a try?"

As an academic librarian, I don't get to recommend books too often. But I did identify with the idea of listening to inarticulate needs and making paths of connection. And anyway - it just made me feel good inside.

Thinking about Academic Librarianship

2007-04-20T12:24:00.000-05:00

There's a new post at ACRLog about a presentation given at a recent national conference on why students choose academic librarianship as a career path - and why they hesitate.

If you're interested in academic libraries, though, you might also want to browse through the blogs from this conference. I found them fascinating, and they point out a lot of the cutting-edge things happening in college and university libraries. Or, if you only have six minutes to spare, check out the video version.

If Someone Asks "Why Library School?"...

2007-04-09T14:25:00.000-05:00

You may be embarking on one of the seven great careers of 2007. According to Kiplinger's:

Librarian. Forget about the image of librarian as mousy bookworm. Today's librarian is a high-tech information sleuth, a master of mining cool databases (well beyond Google) to unearth the desired nuggets. Plus you'll probably have regular hours and good job security. See the American Library Association's Web site or The Librarian's Career Guidebook, by Priscilla Shontz, and Straight from the Stacks: A First-Hand Guide to Careers in Library and Information Science, Laura Townsend Kane.

Libraries and the Homeless

2007-04-04T13:30:00.000-05:00

This article by Chip Ward is painful to read. He talks about the homeless people he dealt with at the Salt Lake City public library - and about the issue generally. But it's the stories of individuals and the complexity of dealing with them that really gets you.

I wasn't sure I should post this here. I don't want to discourage anyone from a career in libraries. But this is one of the realities at a lot of libraries, and an issue none of us should ignore.

Finding is Better than Searching

2007-04-02T17:11:00.000-05:00

It's become something of an aphorism - librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find. This jaunty little YouTube clip shows the flight of a harried student trying to find Time Magazine in a library - turn the sound on to get the full effect.

It certainly shows how frustrating it can be to accomplish a task that may seem straightforward to librarians but involves too many steps. If we want to be better than Google we'd better find ways to make simple things simple.

Five Blogs

2007-03-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

There's a meme going around - what are five blogs that you read that are not library-related?

Here's my five faves:

BoingBoing - a directory of wonderful things. Or so they say. Mostly they're rather odd.

CJR Daily - news about the news business.

Sivacracy - from Siva Vaidhyanathan and friends.

if:book - interesting ways to look at emerging networks and the effect they could have on books

beSpacific - okay, maybe there's a touch of library in this one, but I read it mainly so I know what will be on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow. Lots of good government reports and legal information.

ALA Responds to the IG's Report

2007-03-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

Leslie Burger of the ALA has responded to the recent and damning report from the Inspector General on the mishandling of National Security Letters by the FBI. Jennifer Granick of Wired News (who reminds us that, though this report only looks at the FBI, the Pentagon and the CIA are also issuing NSLs, with dubious legal authority) argues it's time to amend the PATRIOT Act.

A Book to Watch For

2007-03-14T19:58:00.000-05:00

Library Boy points out a new book that may be of interest ... things you can do with an MLS.

Weeding, part 2

2007-02-10T00:39:00.000-06:00

I wrote last year about my library's development of a comprehensive weeding plan. Ultimately, it was decided that a different approach would be taken. Specifically, instead of removing a certain percentage of books with little recent use, a complete title-by-title evaluation of our collection will occur. [Each plan has its advantages and disadvantages. I will leave that as an exercise to the reader.] As such, the librarians at my institution will commence an 8-year collection evaluation plan on May 1st. My colleagues like working together, so we will be working in teams of two librarians, with each team evaluating 5230 books a year (approximately 201 shelves averaging 26 books each). For my particular assignment my partner and I will evaluate the books on Asian history next year (books with call numbers DS63.1 .D5313 1984 to DS8818 .W55).

This semester we are piloting this plan using our oversize collection. So far, the pilot is going well. Of course, we are running into all sorts of issues that are generating a lot of discussion among the librarians. For example, are we completely abandoning cassette tapes and slides? What do we do with books containing beautiful full color plates of birds, but were last checked out 30 years ago? What do we do with resources held by no other libraries in the WorldCat catalog, even though no one has ever borrowed them?

My partner and I are finding that we can comfortably do about 7 shelves a week. We'll see what happens when we begin the official project in May. Obviously, evaluating a total of 26,150 books and other resources per year is a huge time commitment for my colleagues. We're all wondering if it is a reasonable target, and hope that it is. We also hope we won't overwhelm our technical services staff, who has to remove withdrawals from our catalog and black out the books' barcodes and ownership information. I'll keep you all informed as our collection evaluation project proceeds.

Research support

2007-02-10T00:23:00.000-06:00

For academic librarians, some form of scholarly activity, such as participation in professional associations and research, is usually expected. I engage in both activities. I am active in ALA, serving, for example, on the Reference and User Services Association's president's conference program committee, and as the listserv administrator for the Instruction Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. I am also collaborating with a colleague at John Brown University in Arkansas on a research project. We finally sent our survey out today to some 600 library directors around the country. This mailing cost a lot of money. (We chose a mailing over e-mail and a Web-based survey for various reasons.) Luckily, he and I have institutional support to cover the cost of this research

My point is, if you looking for academic library jobs out of library school, be sure to inquire about institutional support for scholarly activities, such as research and travel, during your interviews. I know that without my professional development fund at my school, I would not be able to attend ALA conferences to network with other librarians and learn about the new resources and current issues in the profession, nor would I be able to conduct research projects without a significant cost to my pocketbook.

. . . Unless You Live in the Twilight Zone

2007-02-01T07:58:00.000-06:00

This Twilight Zone episode is an interesting cold war-era meditation on obsolescence.

"I am a human being!"
"You are a librarian."

Scribbling index numbers on little cards never sounded so noble. I'm not quite sure how atheism got mixed up with it, though. Found via Library Link of the Day.

You Will Have a Profession . . .

2007-01-31T14:19:00.001-06:00

. . . if Will Sherman is correct. He give 33 reasons why libraries and librarians are irreplaceable.

I wish someone would explain this to the Powers that Be in Jackson County, Oregon.

After School in the Library

2007-01-11T11:38:00.000-06:00

There have been several stories in the news lately about teens using libraries after school. First there was the Maplewood, NJ controversy reported in The New York Times. . Trustees decided to close the library in after school hours because students from a nearby middle school were being disruptive. (Whether that story prompted articles on the problems of middle schools or not is unclear, but the Times has had a couple of in-depth articles about schooling this age-group lately.)

Now the ACLU is challenging a long-standing policy in a suburban New Orleans community of requiring parental permission slips for students visiting the library after school. And even liberal Madison, Wisconsin is considering how to deal with the large numbers of sometimes rambunctious after-schoolers.

It seems that public libraries in communities are seen by working parents as safe places for their children after school - but it means libraries have to rise to the challenge. We'll need librarians interested in working with this age group. If you're considering it, check out the YALSA blog to see what's on the minds of librarians in the Young Adult Library Services Association. They have some good ideas!

That Was the Year...

2007-01-03T19:31:00.000-06:00

Around new year's, people seem to like to look back at the year to see what was notable. Librarians are no exception.

Here, for example, is a list of "Ten Stories that Shaped 2006" from LISNews. They include many items that aren't strictly-speaking library issues: net neutrality, privacy, censorship, the James Fry affair. Also included: Library 2.0, new library blogs of note, the closing of EPA libraries, and the infamous Taser incident at UCLA.

ACRLog's Steven Bell weighs in with academic library's Year in Review - also noting Libary 2.0 among other top stories.

Technology Trends got wrapped up at Read/Write Web.

And if that's not enough, Fimoculous lists all kinds of lists, including best books of the year, best book covers, best Websites, and even the New York Times's librarians of the year.

It's hard to imagine what will be on the list for 2007. Meanwhile - happy new year!

New Media Literacies

2006-12-12T15:39:00.000-06:00

In a fascinating new report from the MacArthur Foundation's "Building the Field of Digital Media Learning" titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, the authors describes how the Internet enables a new "participatory culture" that requires the knowledge of certain skills.

The authors define participatory culture as "a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creation, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. [It] is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another..."

The report outlines several forms of participatory culture, including affiliations (memberships in online communities, like Facebook and MySpace), expressions (production of new forms, like mash-ups and modding), collaborative problem-solving (creation of "new knowledge" through Wikipedia and alternative reality gaming, like Second Life), and circulations (podcasting and blogging).

While "one-half of all teens have created media content" and "one-third of of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced," the authors believe there is "the need for... pedagogical intervention..." One of their concerns, for example, is "the transparency problem": "The challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world."

In response, educators are encouraged to teach a number of skills to the young, including play, performance, simulation ("the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes"), appropriation ("the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content"), multitasking, distributed cognitition ("the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities"), collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation ("the ability to travel across diverse communities").

I wonder, though, if "participatory culture" is a really new concept. While the Internet certainly provides the means for more widely disseminating information, I wonder if it really provides lower barriers to civic engagement. In fact, the Internet allows us to find people more like ourselves and shields us from dissenting points of view. When I specifically choose what feeds/blogs/Web sites I want to read and what online social communities to join, all specifically tailored to my own interests, I am less challenged by dissenting views and less likely to engage the other in the public square, whether that square is online or outside.

Many of the "new" skills educators are encouraged to teach are, in my humble opinion, developed through a solid liberal arts education. They are also the same or similar to those explicated in various information literacy competency standards. For example, the report's definition of networking ("the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information") is basically the American Library Association's definition of information literacy.

Overall, these are minor criticisms, and I am not done reading the report. I look forward to finishing it.

Google's and Microsoft's book search services

2006-12-07T15:32:00.000-06:00

Setting aside the concern of information monopolies, Google Book Search and Microsoft's Live Search Books have been really helpful for me. For example, last night a student needed help with the microfiche machine: she was trying to read John Rankin's Letters on American Slavery, a title included in the well known Library of American Civilization microfiche series. The problem is, the work is over 100 pages long and we charge ten cents per photocopied page. Who wants to read a lengthy book like that at a microfiche machine? I knew the book was written well over a century ago (1833) and probably owned by a research library, so I searched Google Book Search to see if it had been digitized and is available online. Sure enough, it is. (I'm not linking to it because I haven't figured out Google Book Search's permalink structure yet.) Needless to say, the student was overjoyed.

I also used Google Book Search recently for a personal project. I was reading James Beard's book American Cookery. The book contains a bibliography of old American cookbooks he had consulted. I found many of them online. Old cookbooks are fascinating, sexist reading. They include the following:

Beecher, Catharine. Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book. New York 1846. 293 pp. The 1850 edition is online.

Chase, A. W. Dr. Chase's Recipes. Ann Arbor 1866. 384 pp.
The 1860 edition is online.

Cornelius, Mrs. Mary. The Young Housekeeper's Friend. Boston 1846. 190 pp.
The 1868 edition is online.

Harland, Marion. Common Sense in the Household. New York 1881. 546 pp.
The 1874 edition is online.

Peterson, Hannah Mary Bouvier. The National Cook Book. By a Lady of Philadelphia, a Practical Housewife. Philadelphia 1856. 301 pp.
The 1866 edition is online.

Webster, Mrs. A. L. The Improved Housewife. Hartford, Connecticut 1852. 236 pp.
The 1851 edition is online.

Scholarships!

2006-11-09T21:36:00.000-06:00

This week's American Libraries Direct (an e-mail news service for American Library Association members) includes information about ALA scholarships available for library-school-bound students. The same issue points out a Comparison Guide to Distance Ed Programs that provides basic information for 21 programs.

Oh, and it also links to a silly rap video on YouTube - The Chronicles of Libraria.

LJ Free to LIS Students

2006-11-02T18:33:00.000-06:00

Just noticed this invite in Library Journal's Academic Newswire. They'll give you a year's subscription to Library Journal free (if you're in the US). Only looks as if you have to print out the form, get an envelope and stamp (how old-fashioned) and get it mailed in by the end of the calendar year.

What Do New Librarians Earn?

2006-10-22T18:32:00.000-05:00

Library Journal has published its latest salary survey - and found we've broken a barrier. The average starting salary has topped $40K for the first time. Other findings - 25% of LIS grads found a job before graduation and over 90% of grads had jobs in some sort of library agency. The average job search, however, was four months.

Who's earning the most? "Positions in database management, for solo librarians, and in usability testing helped drive the rise in overall average earnings." But tech services and serials positions actually earn less than previously.

Not everyone's broken the 40K barrier. One of the disturbing findings of the annual report:

Women still eclipse the LIS professions, comprising 85% of the graduate pool reporting employment status. In 2005, the gender gap persisted and even widened. Average starting salaries for women have yet to reach $40,000. They reported an average of $39,587 for 2005 (2.28% increase—less than $1000—from 2004), and this increase was significantly less than that experienced by their male counterparts. Men garnered an average starting salary of $42,143 (a 4.49% increase from 2004), which is 6.46% higher than women’s starting salaries.

They didn't teach me about this one in library school...

2006-10-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

Last night the circulation supervisor walked up to the reference desk and told me in a low voice about something disturbing she had seen outside. Someone had placed a dead raccoon right outside the entrance to the library! The raccoon was dressed with a scarf and a pair of sunglasses, and a cigarette was hanging out of its mouth. To its left was a cardboard sign that read, "Will work for food." The whole situation sounds funny, I suppose, but it was also a bit disturbing and I was really not in the mood to deal with it. I called the library director at home for her advice. She told me to call campus security. An officer arrived 15 minutes later and called it an act of vandalism, so he alerted the cops. A city police officer arrived soon after to photograph the scene. One of the two men removed the animal from the premises.

What is your craziest library story?

Public libraryland

2006-10-19T22:58:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I am an academic librarian. However, I recently stepped into the public library world. Last week I was hired as the Sunday Library Supervisor at my local public library. I will work 12:30-5PM every other Sunday at this library serving as the librarian-in-charge and reference librarian.

It's been a fascinating experience so far. The reference and circulation desks are combined, so there's a lot of traffic. I check out books and check them in, too. I sign people up for computer use. I had my first fiction readers' advisory questions ever, as one elderly woman asked me to help her find read-alikes for the author Lauraine Snelling and one girl wanted stories about Halloween. And I have to get comfortable with the Dewey Decimal System!

I'll keep you informed about more of the differences that I notice as I work more. I also hope to comment on how this experience will improve the service I provide in the academic setting.

Weeding

2006-10-19T22:13:00.000-05:00

I'm on a committee at work that is developing a plan to weed our library's collection of about 300,000 or so volumes. We need a systematic weeding program because we're running out of space. But besides opening up shelf space for new and more relevant library resources, a well weeded collection also can increase circulation. After all, with all the older, unusable things removed from the mix, it's easier to find the good stuff.

It goes without saying, but librarians don't like to throw books away. However, if a librarian takes a reasonable 20 minutes evaluating each volume (checking core lists, bibliographies, total copies in WorldCat, etc.), he or she will need at least 11.5 years. There must be a faster way.

There is! As a undergraduate liberal arts college, our primary weeding criterion can be use. Since my college is not a major research library, there isn't an expectation that we'll keep everything. As such, we librarians simply need to determine what books are being used, and withdraw the rest. And there will be evidence of such use on the date due slip or in the library system.

Also, using use as the primary criterion, we librarians avoid the problem that is encountered when using publication date to evaluate books: accidentally weeding those classics in a discipline published years ago. If a work is truly a classic, one would hope that faculty and students are using it!

We knew that we want to weed at least 10% of our collection, but we needed to determine a definition of "use" for our collection so removal at the shelves can be fast and efficient. So, we selected a statistically significant sample of 500 books (+/- 4.3% error, 95% confidence level). We recorded each book's last checkout date. We discovered that the bottom 10% of our collection last circulated before 1983. If the committee settles on the 10% figure, we'll be able to use this date as our test for each volume.

Yes, the system is not perfect: What about those books that were purchased 5 years ago but have not circulated? What about books in series, where one book was loaned, but none of the others? Or what about books that are used in-house and are never stamped with a due date? What about the books everyone is checking out, but are simply out of date?

Weeding is not perfect; accidents will be made. But a vast majority of things removed are never needed again. And more shelf space and an increase in general circulation are definite benefits.

We haven't started withdrawing anything yet. We just finished our sample and are trying to decide if we want to weed 5%, 10%, 15%, or all the way up to 30% of our collection. Whatever we decide, we have data to let us know when that bottom 5 or 20% last circulated, and at the same time have a convenient rule that staff can apply at the shelf to decrease the time agonizing over individual titles and increase the time we spend providing service at the reference desk, teaching in the classroom, or selecting new relevant information resources. Needless to say, we are excited to begin!

NOTE: For those of you who know where I work, our committee's work is in progress and our plan has yet to be approved by our library's faculty. Thus, the details described here are unofficial and are subject to change!

ALA Report on Diversity

2006-10-12T16:45:00.000-05:00

There's a report out on the diversity (or lack) in the profession, reported in today's via Library Journal's Academic Newswire. It has some interesting and sobering implications for folks entering the profession.

Though there are a lot of librarians nearing retirement, we aren't doing a great job of making room at the table for newcomers. The report says

. . . it is clear we are not integrating our MLIS graduates into library employment. With few staff of retirement age leaving the profession, entry-level positions that should be available to graduates are not. Upper and mid-level staff are not moving up or out, thereby stifl ing vacancies at many levels of library employment.

Looking at the numbers of graduates in years 1999–2000 and 2000–2001, it is clear that individuals under age 35 reporting employment in the Libraries and Archives industry is lower than it should be . . . not only are ALA accredited degrees on the decline, but enrollment is rising steadily. The profession hasn’t seen such low ALA accredited graduation rates since the early 1980s.

So if I'm reading this correctly, people who start LIS education are not finishing at the rate one would expect, and people who become librarians often leave the field. Clearly, if we want to have a healthy profession, we need to work on having have better entry points and stronger career ladders. We worry that technology is going to render us irrelevant - but I'm more concerned that we aren't thinking hard enough about how to support new members of the profession.

Bad Blogger!

2006-10-07T20:32:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting this blog for the past month, but not because anything's wrong - it's just so right that we've been really busy in our library.

We started the year with a new Website design (that we're still tinkering with - thanks, Alec, for your help this week!), a cool new toolbar, a database-driven program for our electronic resources, and a crash course for faculty in some of the new things we've added to the collection.

Instruction's hopping, too, with quite a few faculty scheduling multiple sessions. It's great to have more than a fifty-minute slot to try and cover what is a truly complicated process. And I'm teaching a new first term seminar - challenging, but a chance to get more insight into students' lives and challenges.

All of which is great, but time consuming. I'll try to check in more regularly, now that the first beginning-of-term rush has settled down.

New peer-review concept

2006-10-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

Wired has printed an AP story on new peer-reviewing publishing systems in the science community. In a way, I am surprised that these ideas haven't been tried before. There are many social networking sites that work in a similar way (I am thinking about Digg). But I wonder, do scientists have lots of free time to be doing free-lance review work?

eBook readers

2006-09-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

Sony has finally released their eBook reader into the US market. Electronic paper, anyone? Read about it and an alternative at MetaFilter.

Although a bit dated (2001), simply the best article about the important legal and cultural issues related to eBooks is Clifford Lynch's The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World.

Interesting Job Opportunities

2006-09-22T09:54:00.000-05:00

The field of librarianship is full of interesting, unusual job opportunities. Consider this one at Guantanamo Bay, for example.

Open Sources

2006-09-06T06:39:00.000-05:00

Here's a cool idea! Make searching better than Google by having a real, live person help you! Wow that's innovation! That's really forward-thinking! That's really ... exactly what libraries do, and have done for years. By phone, by chat, in person. Whatever works.

Why is it that so many people still don't think of the library when they get frustrated doing a Web search? I guess that's what the OCLC Perceptions report was all about - though it annoyed me when I read it, thinking they were dismissing people's genuine interest in books.

I wonder if the problem isn't that libraries are local, and Google is everywhere, always? So many libraries have scaled back on hours and can't answer reference questions exept for the few hours a week they're open - unless they pay to be part of a chat reference service, which costs money and hasn't, so far as I know, been widely adopted by users enough to make a strong case to the bean counters who closed the library in the first place.

If we can't be there to provide reference on line or in person, or are only there thirty hours a week, most of them when people are at work, we'll have a hard time convincing people helping them find information is what we do.

Gee, maybe this guy's idea makes sense after all ....

E-Government and Libraries

2006-09-01T08:53:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting article in LJ about how essential libraries are becoming not just as sources of government information but as places where people participate in government. And man oh man, are there a lot of implications! Not only resource issues (how will we afford to replace those old computers?) but service and education issues (how will we help that little old lady learn how to sign up for their benefits? Or how do you help your patrons apply for FEMA relief if your library has a hole in the roof and no power?) The recommendations are sound, but what a lot to think about!

And how ironic that while libraries are becoming essential for two-way communication with government, there's legislation in the works that is designed to turn off social networking sites in libraries.

You can't have your space, but we won't talk to you unless you do it online. Sincerely, Big Brother.

Attending Library Conferences

2006-08-31T07:59:00.000-05:00

I am excited to be attending my very first Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference this year. I will be volunteering for all three days of the conference, but will also get to attend any conference sessions that don't interfere with helping out.

Does anyone have any tips for attending professional conferences like this? Is there anything I should know/be prepared for before I go?

I'd love to hear any tips, advice or anecdotes people have to share.

Not About Libraries, But . . .

2006-08-17T15:52:00.000-05:00

. . . it's still big news. A district court says the NSA can't wiretap Americans without judicial oversight. It's unconstitutional. And it's gotta stop. Right now.

Whoa! (Literally.)

AOL Explains Why Privacy Matters

2006-08-10T06:54:00.000-05:00

The AOL flub of releasing searches has made me think more about the reasons librarians care so much about privacy. The New York Times tracked down a little old lady who liked conducting searches for herself and friends but is naturally disturbed that her curiosity has now become a public plaything.

And apparently identifying and speculating about the people behind the data is a common sport now that it's out there - see Boing Boing for an example.

I've heard so many people say "I don't care if anyone knows what I'm reading," usually while giving me a look that says "you librarians are so persnickity and paranoid." Well, they might care if they had some personal unhappiness to deal with - and providing information in whatever form to help people out in such situations is what libraries do. Our patrons deserve a chance to think in private.

Though AOL's breech of their customers' privacy is outrageous, it might have given librarians a powerful new example to use when arguing for privacy.

Do Searches Take Too Long?

2006-08-02T19:47:00.000-05:00

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education asks why the process of hiring an academic librarian takes so long. Steven Bell at ACRLog recaps the article and asks for reports from the job search front. A few months from job posting to hire is par for the course.

It seems inexcusable to me to fail to inform candidates of the progress of a search, but finding the right match is a big decision - for the hiring institution as well as for the applicants, so I'm not too surprised it takes time.

Changes at the Library of Congress

2006-07-28T10:53:00.000-05:00

Controversy related to proposed changes by the Library of Congress has been simmering in the academic library community for months. The controversy is now breaking into more general academic news sources. Today's article in Inside Higher Ed does a good job summarizing the issues without overwhelming readers with complicated jargon. One of the major sticking points is that "catalog records for new books will no longer indicate if they belong to a series." Anyone who has done any amount of serious library research would realize what a devastasting problem that would be. While I agree that changes are certainly needed to enable the library world to respond faster to a rapidly changing information environment, LOC's unilateral approach violates one of the field's most sacred values, collaboration. Arguably, their changes, while an attempt to increase access to library materials by making them available sooner through various streamlined processes, paradoxically hinders access, which is another library value. It will be interesting to see what the response will be from disciplines in the humanities, which especially depend on traditional print library resources.

Free WorldCat!

2006-07-22T15:05:00.000-05:00

WorldCat is going to be free to the world! According to this story in Information Today, it will go live sometime in August.

So what? You may ask. Or even, What the heck is WorldCat and why is she so excited about it? This is the mega-catalog of over 70 million book records shared by libraries worldwide. When their "find in a library" program was announced I thought it was cool, but the links to library availability weren't easy to find in a general search, and it was only a miniscule mere 3-4 million records. "Why not make the whole thing free and searchable in one place rather than hidden among a billion bookseller links?" I wondered. Well, finally OCLC will do that. Previously the only public access has been through libraries subscribing to it as a database, just another hard-to-figure-out database among dozens.

I'm excited! And it sounds as if the interface could do some very innovative things. It will be terrific if people can hop on the web and find out what's available in area libraries without having to go to specific library sites and figure out their various catalogs. If we want people to find us, we should be as easy to use as ABEbooks and Amazon. Because we know from their experience people really do want books.